


Exo Back Next Door: Episode 6

by ellieq_e



Series: Exo Back Next Door [6]
Category: EXO (Band), 우리 옆집에 EXO 가 산다 | EXO Next Door
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 09:16:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellieq_e/pseuds/ellieq_e
Summary: Basking in the afterglow of her kiss with childhood crush-turned-sort of boyfriend Park Chanyeol, Ji Yeon-Hee's world is shaken by a sudden revelation. Will their relationship ever recover?





	1. News

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a series! My interpretation of if EXO Next Door had a second season :)

“Omygosh omygosh omygosh! I can’t believe you had your first kiss with Chanyeol in a janitor’s closet!!!!” Ji held her phone a foot away from face as her best friend Gae-un screamed hysterically on the other end.

“Is that all?” she asked, tentatively bringing the receiver back towards her face.

“No!” Gae-un shouted again, startling Ji and probably bursting one of her eardrums. “EEEeeee!!! Ok, that’s all.”

With her best friend calmed down and her entire day free of classes as the semester wound down, Ji was free to spend the rest of her day analyzing, replaying, and happily reminiscing over her first ever real kiss with a boy. Subconsciously, she touched her swollen lips with her fingers, remembering what it felt like to have his lips there, softly pressing into hers, yet urgent and passionate at the same time.

He had been the absolute, absolute, best first kiss of all time, with the way his hand had cupped firmly under her chin, holding her still as his lipped rammed into hers out of nowhere. She remembered the way his strong hands had then felt as they had moved their way along her neck, along the back of her head, along her waist, and the small of her back, exploring each and every inch of her bodily hungrily and greedily.

She remembered being frozen in shock at first, blushing immensely as his soft, wet tongue had poked its way into her mouth and engaged hers in a dance. Oh, she had felt so awkward at first (she felt herself blushing at even the memory), but she remembered finally being able to relax and dance a little back.

In that moment, she had felt so connected to him, so amazing, so alive, she had almost forgotten why he had decided to kiss her in the first place. Her brow furrowed, wondering the same question.

“Why do you think he did it?” she asked Gae-un. (She had found out recently that her surprisingly wise best friend often seemed to hold the secrets to the universe).

“Hmmm,” Gae-un pondered on the other end, giving it some thought. “Maybe it was the heat of the moment? You _did_ say that you two were trapped alone in a small, dark space after you had just been running from a hoard of crazy fangirls, didn’t you? Maybe it was a combination of the adrenaline, your close-quartered tension, and your extreme irresistibility,” she teased, throwing that last one in for fun.

Ji threw a pillow across the room in embarrassment, intending to hit Gae-un on the head with it had she been there in the room with her in that moment.

“Pthh,” she stuck her tongue out at her, not sure whether she could hear it over on the other end, but nonetheless feeling it was necessary. “You’re no help,” she muttered, embarrassed.

“Well you’re no kissing amateur anymore,” Gae-un responded, winning the mock-fight.

Ahhh. Ji hid her head under her blankets in embarrassment.

“I love you!” Gae-un crowed, hanging up.

….  
Alone in the house for the day, Ji considered heading next door, a force of habit from spending her winter vacation off constantly running over to the Exo house on Chanyeol’s demand. Her brother was still at school at the moment, and from what she had heard her say through half-opened eyes that morning, it seemed that her mother would also be out at the office until at least 3 pm today, too.

_Just Ji, myself, and some TV_, Ji thought to herself, chuckling at her own pun as she went to the kitchen to grab a bowl of popcorn. Settling down at the couch with remote control in hand, she couldn’t keep her giddiness from showing.

_Maybe I should never wash these lips again_, she thought to herself before dozing off again.

…  
Ring!

Ji Yeon-hee woke up to the sound of her ringtone, a soft and cheerful chirping lullaby of birds that soon turned vicious if not answered in time. Groggily looking down at her phone, she saw that she had received three missed voice calls and seven missed text messages.

Scrolling through the first ones that appeared without unlocking her screen, she saw that they were all from Gae-un.

“I’m so sorry,” the first one read.

“I can’t believe it,” said the second.

_Huh? What was there to be sorry for?_

Ji furrowed her brow, making to unlock her phone. She stopped in her tracks as she heard the news announcement broadcast a very familiar couple of names on her still-turned on TV. Turning the volume up, she turned to pay attention: “Park Chanyeol from Exo has first public outing with new girlfriend…KPop! Today magazine exclusively reports that it’s their very own Meena Rhie.” A magazine cover of the next day’s printing swirled onto the TV screen, and it felt like it was Ji’s very own personal slap in the face.

Freezing in place, her stomach dropped to the floor.

_What?_ They had to be mistaken somehow. _What was this? This nonsense? What was this?_ Ji refused to believe what she had just heard, while at the same time trying to make sense of the nonsensicalness of it all.

She tried playing the words over in her head again in reverse order, then forwards. She mixed them up, put some in and took some out. But no matter which way she spun it, the new she had just heard still didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t be. _Wouldn’t_ be.

And yet, she had seen his picture, clear as day, splashed across the TV screen. Him and that evil serpent of a woman.

“Park Chanyeol…new girlfriend…Meena Rhie.”

For the first time since the boys next door had moved back in, tears began welling up Ji’s eyes. She tried to push the feeling down, but to no avail, it bubbled up again. Deep inside, a part of Ji Yeon-hee wished that the boys of Exo had never come back to be her neighbors again, that they could have just remained a pleasant fragment of her pleasant, happy memories, never to be seen or heard from again. Or, even better, that they had never stepped foot into her life in the place.


	2. The Search

“Where is Ji?” The first words out of Chanyeol’s mouth the second he got home were laced with anxiety and dripping with acid.

“Yo, yo, brother, what’s going on?” Sehun was the first one to greet him at the door. Wearing his ripped-knee rockstar jeans and loose-fitting bomber jacket like always, he swaggered over to his bandmate with just a smidge of his concern crinkled onto his normally perfect wrinkle-free face.

“Ji,” Chanyeol repeated again, a panicked expression on his face and a panicked tone creeping into his voice. “Where is she?”

“You mean she’s not with you?” asked Suho as he came into the kitchen, hauling the bucket of fish that he and D.O. had caught the other day and had been busy grilling all day today.

“_No_,” Chanyeol responded sharply, in a way none of the other members had ever seen him speak to their group’s leader. Sensing that something must be very wrong in order to cause him to act this way, they crowded around their group’s rapper and resident “reverse” face, his low, manly voice never quite matching his beautiful, effeminate facial features.

“Hey, slow down there, what’s going on?” asked Baekhyun who, having heard the commotion, came in from the other room.

‘I—I have to find her, the story with Meena just aired, it’s all a mess,” the usual calm and composed Chanyeol took his cap off his head and started grabbing at his red-brown hair in fistfuls.

“Yo, yo, dude,” Kai said, calming him down before he ruined his perfectly coiffed hair. “Let’s not get rash, here.”

Sehun nodded at him, stroking his chin thoughtfully before proposing an answer.

“Why don’t we ask her brother?” he suggested.

The other members turned to look at him simultaneously, all seeming to be thinking the same thing.

They didn’t need to say it because it was so apparent on their faces: _now_, that _is not such a bad idea._

_…_

“So you’re saying that your sister turned on the TV, called her friend, and went crying out of the house?” Chanyeol asked, all six live-in members of Exo squeezed in behind him in the Ji family’s crowded doorway.

A stone-faced Gwangsu nodded vigorously three times, keeping his wooden sword in front of him at all times in case these supernatural visitors tried to forbiddingly enter the house under his watch.

“Do you have any idea what she could have been watching?” Chanyeol tried again, exasperated.

_Uhh_. Gwangsu tilted his head up, trying to think.

Finally, one of the lackeys burst forward from the doorway, crossing the forbidden threshold and into the house. Gwangsu drew his sword, preparing to fight.

“Hey, friend, it’s just me,” Sehun came forward, holding his hands in front of him.

“Friend,” Gwangsu bowed to his rockstar friend, leaving the rest of Exo perplexedly standing in the doorway behind them.

“Listen, friend,” Sehun said, bowing back and placing a hand on the young high school student but wannabe kung fu master’s shoulder.

“This is a time of urgent crisis, do you understand?”

Gwangsu nodded, suddenly serious that his friend was calling upon in such a time of need. He stood a little taller in his red striped tracksuit and gave a salute.

“I need you to think back, can you remember anything or anyone that might lead us to finding your sister?” Sehun asked, pleading.

_Hmmm_. Gwangsu thought for a moment, before grabbing a pen and jotting some numbers down a scrap of paper. Underneath it, he wrote, “Gae-un.”

“Use it well, friend,” he said to Sehun, who wrapped him in a big old bear hug in response. 

Stepping back, Sehun nodded.

“See you soon, friend,” he said to him.

…

“So you’re sure that Ji is at this coffee shop?” Chanyeol asked the female voice on the other end, who seemed like she was simultaneously uncomfortable at communicating with the boy who had seemingly cheated on her best friend and wanting to scream at the fact that she was talking to a member of the world-famous band Exo.

“That’s what she texted me,” she responded bluntly, letting the silence go on.

“Ok, thank you,” said Chanyeol as he hung up, sensing that he wasn’t going to be getting any more information out of her.

“Guys, I’m going to head over alone,” Chanyeol said to group of guys huddled around him on the couches when he got off the phone.

He held up his hands when they began to protest, knowing that they wanted to help him in any way that they could, but also knowing that they would respect his decisions when it came to it.

“This is between Ji and me,” he said, pulling his hood over his head. With just nothing but a black face mask, flimsy hood, and black cap maintaining his anonymity to the outside world, Chanyeol headed out the door to get his girl back.


End file.
